Title

Author

Publication Date

2008

Degree Type

Master's Project

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Computer Science

Abstract

Many smart phones today use tiny sensors called accelerometers to provide enhanced user interface controls. Accelerometers measure the linear acceleration in the x, y, z directions based on the movement of the phone. These sensors basically reduce the need of dedicated navigation and function keys on the mobile device. Accelerometer based mobile devices use this principle for creating applications like games, controlling the orientation of the display screen, etc. The goal of this project is to extend the WebKit browser interface of Google’s mobile development platform called ‘Android’ by creating accelerometer based motion features like shake feature, orientation of images, zoom in/out, scrolling, etc. For instance, the user can shake the phone in order to erase an entered text. Also, by rotating the phone clockwise or anti-clockwise, the orientation of the underlying images will change accordingly. While browsing a web page, the user could tilt the phone in left, right, top, bottom directions which will cause the web page to scroll accordingly. Also, by tilting the phone towards or away form the user, one can zoom in and zoom out on a web page.